“Black Tagliatelle with Squid” (featuring green linguini and shrimp)

“Black” “Tagliatelle” with “Squid”
Originally uploaded by electric counterpoint.

In this post, I’m going to describe a true-to-life, eminently edible paradox of Italian food. Before I get there, though, let’s venture across time and the Ionian Sea to get to ancient Greece. Theseus suffered a famous philosophical paradox in maintaining his favorite ship: as planks weathered and warped, he was forced to replace them. Naturally, this happened to every plank on deck at some point. After what point, though, was Theseus’ trireme no longer Theseus’ trireme? After what point can it be said that the components of a set have been so fundamentally changed that the set itself is changed?

I encountered my own not-wholly-accurate rendering of this problem tonight in the kitchen. A Mediterranean cookbook Jessica and I purchased a few months back featured a recipe for a black ink tagliatelle with squid sauce which, by joint virtue of its sumptuous illustration and my own recent seafood kick, I felt I must try to recreate.

My problems began at Whole Foods. With one trip, I intended to pick up a pound and a half of salmon for my above-linked lox experiment and the fresh squid I needed for the pasta. I scored on the first count but struck out on the second: Ann Arbor is not the place for exotic seafood. Fine, I resolved; I still had some shrimp in the freezer that I’d been saving for pad thai.

Next, the tagliatelle. Tagliatelle (a word I have learnt to spell reliably only since beginning this blog entry) is a sort of classic, romantic magnum opus that only happens to be executed in the pasta medium. The typically reserved Wikipedia, reading here more like a menu from the Olive Garden, calls it “an expression of the art of hand-made pasta” (one wonders about the NPOV on that!). I was all set to pick up a recipe and get down to business hand-crafting some noodles, but Jessica advised against it. Jessica has experience with these kinds of things. Her advice came as we happened to pass through Meijer’s “Ethnic Food” aisle, so I grabbed a bag of store-brand spinance linguine and just sort of teared up a bit.

So, my black tagliatelle was actually green linguine, and the squid meant for its sauce was actually cocktail shrimp. Strangely, Google’s never heard of that, and anyway I get sort of headstrong about my impossible recipes, so I decided I would just press on. “Black Tagliatelle with Squid,” it was.

The rest of the ingredients, at least, posed no problems. Play along at home:

1. Begin by heating a generous spill of olive oil for a few moments, then sauteeing two chopped shallots. I left these fairly large, but on my next attempt I think I’ll dice them closely. Then come three pressed cloves of garlic and a half-handful of chopped fresh parsley. This can cook for a moment as you turn towards the TV to catch up on the episode of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, which you’ve just become aware of last night when a friend lent you some episodes, and which is quite good in the Arrested Development vein of comedies.
2. Focus. Open the bag of shrimp, empty it of water, and drop its contents into the pan. You could probably substitute scallops here, but then you wouldn’t be making “Black Tagliatelle with Squid,” would you? Pour in about half a cup of white cooking wine as well.
3. Oh man, so this is the one where Mac and Dennis compete over the dead guy’s granddaughter at his funeral, and Charlie discovers the truth about Dennis’ grandfather. Hilarity totally ensues.
4. Focus. If it’s been a minute or two, and the shrimp have made the sauce a little darker in color, now’s the time to empty a fourteen ounce can of diced tomatoes into it. Otherwise, go back to the TV.
5. Once that’s done, put a lid on. If you’re using fresh seafood you should let it simmer for about an hour to cook all the way through, but even with my precooked shrimp I decided to give the sauce some time on low heat while the noodles were cooking.
6. Boil some water.
7. Dejected, drop the little curly noodle coils in, about two per diner. Wait for al dente status (and it will take a while, these little guys are thick), then drain. You know what to do.

Seriously, this dish turned out pretty well. I will definitely be making the sauce again, at the very least. Someday I hope to get a line on some fresh squid and some proud, wizened Bolognese to craft me some tagliatelle. Until then, I’m fine with putting the recipe’s name in quotation marks, and enjoying it just the same.